Alert Definitions in VMware Aria Operations

Alert definitions are a combination of symptoms and recommendations that you combine to identify problem areas in your environment and generate alerts on which you can act for those areas. You can then respond to the alerts with effective solutions that are provided in the recommendations.

Where You Find Alert Definitions

To manage your alert definitions, from the left menu, click Configure > Alerts, and then in the right pane, click Alert Definitions.

Option	Description
Toolbar options	Use the toolbar options to manage your alert definitions. Add. Add an alert definition. Click the horizontal ellipsis to perform the following actions. Edit. Modify the selected definition. Delete. Remove the selected definition. Clone. Create a copy of the selected definition so that you can customize it for your needs. Export. Downloads the alert definition. Import. Allows you to import alert definitions. To import: Click the Import option from the horizontal ellipsis. Click Browse and select the file to import. Select if you want to Overwrite or Skip the file in case of a conflict. Click Import to import the alert definition, and click Done.
Filters	Limits the list of alerts to those matching the filter you create. You can also sort on the columns in the data grid.
Name	Name of the alert definition, which is also the name of the alert that appears when the symptoms are triggered.
Adapter Type	Adapter that manages the selected base object type.
Object Type	Base object type against which the alert is defined.
Alert Type	Metadata that is used to classify the alert when it is generated. You define the value on the Alert Impact page of the workspace.
Alert Subtype	Subcategory of the alert type and is the metadata that is used to classify the alert when it is generated. You define the value on the Alert Impact page of the workspace.
Criticality	Severity of the alert when it is generated. The criticality includes the following possible values: Symptom. Alert is configured to display symptom based criticality. Critical Immediate Warning Info
Impact	Alert is configured to affect the Health, Risk, or Efficiency badge.
Defined by	Indicates who added the alert definition. The alert can be added by an adapter, a user, or the VMware Aria Operations system.
Last Modified	Displays the date on which the alert was last modified.

Predefined alerts are provided in VMware Aria Operations as part of your configured adapters. Use Alert Definitions to manage your VMware Aria Operations alert library, and to add or modify the definitions.

Modifying Alert Definitions

If you modify the alert impact type of an alert definition, any alerts that are already generated will have the previous impact level. Any new alerts will be at the new impact level. If you want to reset all the generated alerts to the new level, cancel the old alerts. If they are generated after cancellation, they will have the new impact level.

Symptoms in Alert Definitions

Symptom definitions evaluate conditions in your environment that, if the conditions become true, trigger a symptom and can result in a generated alert. You can add symptom definitions that are based on metrics or super metrics, properties, message events, fault events, or metric events. You can create a symptom definition as you create an alert definition or as an individual item in the appropriate symptom definition list.

When you add a symptom definition to an alert definition, it becomes a part of a symptom set. A symptom set is the combination of the defined symptom with the argument that determines when the symptom condition becomes true.

An alert definition comprises one or more symptom sets. If an alert definition requires all of the symptom sets to be triggered before generating an alert, and only one symptom set is triggered, an alert is not generated. If the alert definition requires only one of several symptom sets to be triggered, then the alert is generated even though the other symptom sets were not triggered.

Recommendations in Alert Definitions

Recommendations are the remediation options that you provide to your users to resolve the problems that the generated alert indicates.

When you add an alert definition that indicates a problem with objects in your monitored environment, add a relevant recommendation. Recommendations can be instructions to your users, links to other information or instruction sources, or VMware Aria Operations actions that run on the target systems.